Our Struggles Determine Our Successes

Rob Lagana BodybuilderHow Our Struggles Determine Our Successes

It sounds like one of the biggest contradictions in the world – our struggles determine our successes. At face value it doesn’t make much sense and it’s much easier to write it off as some old wisdom that was never useful in the first place. But take another moment and read it again, but slower this time.

Struggles Determine Successes

If only for a second, linger on the words and forget your logical approach. All of a sudden it starts to seem more realistic. The subtle hint that our perspective on life is the dictating factor on how happy we will be begins to shine through.

How many times did you have to fall off your bike before you managed to master it? In fact, when you tried daring tricks you also fell, even though you knew how to ride. This is because you challenged yourself. You took it to the next level, but before you could reach it you had to struggle first.

The greatest teacher you can have in life is your mistakes, and it’s your choice whether you want those mistakes to take you forward or hold you back. Thomas Edison failed about ten thousand times before he successfully invented the light bulb. Walt Disney was turned down by several editors with feedback that he didn’t have enough natural talent. Albert Einstein was thought to be a dumb kid, because he only started reading at the age of seven.

All these people, and so many others who have reached great levels of success, had to endure self-doubt, setbacks and struggles. The only difference is that they saw their struggles as opportunities to learn. They didn’t give up because they couldn’t get it right the first hundred times. But they knew success was eventually going to come – they just had to keep on struggling to get there.

But how is it that our struggles determine our successes? In what possible way can something we consider as bad be so good in the end? For starters, struggling allows us to face our demons. While on our journey to reaching our goals we will be introduced to skills we lack and characteristics we might not like very much.

More importantly, struggling will show us what we need to change in order to reach our desired level of success. So when it comes down to it, struggling teaches us how to be successful. The more you struggle the more you are going to learn.

If you think these people are all special in some way or another, you would be wrong. They have the same weaknesses, emotions, tempers and flaws like everyone else. You might also be thinking that they were at the right place at the right time, but this isn’t true either. The simple truth is that their perspectives about life were determined by their desire to keep moving forward.

The thing to remember when you’re struggling and making mistakes is not to beat yourself up about it. Instead, learn to accept that failing is part of the process, and struggling only makes you wiser. It’s understandable that you’ll become negative at some points, everyone does, but you also have to get back up.

The reason why nobody can tell us the meaning of life is because we all have our own meaning. But there is something everyone can agree on, and that’s the journey we take. When you reached the end of your journey and you have had your share of struggles, then you can proudly say you lived. You took the time to get to know your limitations, to work on your weaknesses and to perfect your skills.

It’s true that we get caught up in the success stories of people like Henry Ford and Albert Einstein, but what is the story we all want to read? We want to read about how they beat the odds and how they made it to where they are now. We want to read about how they struggled until they achieved success. That will remain the most interesting part of their stories, because it’s not the success that matters. It’s about the struggles that got them there.